


In Somnis Tibi Mecum

by NeuroWriter14



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Do not repost, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, Incubus Hannibal Lecter, Instantly smitten Hannibal, Is it still cannibalism if its an incubus?, M/M, More tags to be added, incubus au, inquiring minds want to know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeuroWriter14/pseuds/NeuroWriter14
Summary: Hannibal Lecter is a millennia-old incubus; a creature of hedonism who lives on his own, consuming all under him. Will is a rude, surly, empath, and a very human profiler. After a referral by Alana Bloom, Jack brings Hannibal and Will together with the intention of protecting Will's headspace as he consults on cases. Hannibal, smitten upon first meeting, has other ideas.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	In Somnis Tibi Mecum

**Author's Note:**

> This starts off very similar to canon but will change quickly. Gotta set the scene.

Hannibal was many things. He was a psychiatrist, he was a surgeon. He was a friend, mentor, Il Mostro, the Chesapeake Ripper. He had a thousand names and a thousand faces but all were still the same underneath. He was Hannibal Lecter, as he always had been no matter how many lifetimes he'd lived. And he had lived quite a few. He had lived to watch the empires of man rise and fall. Watched gods rise and fall. First, it was the Sumerians, then the Babylonians, then the Egyptians. He had seen dynasties around the world; China, India, the Americas. He had seen nations rise and collapse under their own weight. He had seen men bow to gods and gods bow to men. 

And he was still there. Always there. 

He wasn't the only one. Not by far. He also wasn't the oldest. But he certainly was the most well-traveled of his kin. They had many names. Demons, monsters, vampires, incubi. Hannibal certainly liked the last one the best. Demons who thrived in hedonism. He certainly did. Truly, nothing else mattered beyond his own amusement and his pleasure. Everything else was just a means to an end. A long game of mice to be batted around by him, the cat. 

His current game, that of the Chesapeake Ripper, had him firmly settled into Baltimore, Maryland. 

He quite enjoyed how far humanity had come, creating cities that stretched toward the skies. Though Baltimore certainly wasn't home to the tallest of man's creations, but it was home to an interesting mix of humanity. And certainly well within reach of other interesting mixes of humanity. He knew, not far from his office and his home, was Quantico, the headquarters of the FBI. Hannibal had already toyed with the FBI once and watched them scuttle around in an attempt to find him. One came close. Miriam Lass. 

Hannibal didn't kill Miriam when she came knocking at his door, but he certainly couldn't let her go. She was now under his thumb, her mind filled with images that would only make sense in the long game he had been concocting. He enjoyed his games. He enjoyed watching humans run around like mice trapped on a burning ship. And he certainly had his fun with some of the less favorable of them. It was truly a shame people had to be rude. 

He abhorred rudeness above anything else, though his definition of rude was quite flexible and was often bent to accommodate different actions. It was certainly that which lead Miriam Lass to his door. He had bent the rules for Jeremy Olmstead, who after having an arrow in his thigh, was a little bit too snippy with the surgeon trying to help him. 

He had been wonderful in Hannibal's dinner that night. 

Hannibal had learned that the taste of human flesh was something to be craved. He certainly enjoyed it in the sexual sense, had his taste as was expected of those like him. But he also found there was another way to enjoy this particular taste. 

All of this ran through his mind in the split second after Jack Crawford stepped through the door of his office. 

Normally, though Hannibal liked to toy with them, he didn't think much about the FBI. Not in over two years after he had seemingly vanished from their radar, Miriam Lass in tow. But now, here was Jack Crawford, head of the Behavioral Science Unit, standing at his door. 

Hannibal only half paid attention to the conversation. After Crawford had told him he wasn't there to question him, his interest in the conversation quickly dwindled. Until the man mentioned that Alana Bloom had sent him. 

Now that was quite a curious thing. 

One of the many pieces to his moving puzzle was Alana, who he had mentored during his time at Johns Hopkins. She was a bright but blind beautiful woman. She had gone into psychiatry to study human nature but was utterly blind to the monster in front of her. Not that Hannibal didn't have anything to do with it. In fact, he had everything to do with it. He had chosen her because of her blindness, and her loyalty. And now Alana had sent Jack Crawford to her on behalf of another. 

Will Graham, he learned. 

Hannibal was never one to go into a situation blind. So, after Jack Crawford left, having invited Hannibal to Quantico the next day to meet Mr. Graham, Hannibal immediately went searching first through his mind palace and then the internet to find any whisper of Will Graham. Never had Alana mentioned the man to her, and yet she was sending him into Hannibal's orbit.

Curious.

There was nearly as much information on Mr. Graham on the internet as there was in his own mind. He found something about an incident in New Orleans, where Will Graham was stabbed by a suspect, and then subsequently left the New Orleans police department. The only other listings for Will Graham were for an address in the middle of nowhere in Virginia, and a name on a course schedule at Quantico. 

There wasn't a picture. 

Curiouser and curiouser. 

He supposed the mystery of Will Graham would be solved the next day, and so Hannibal was resigned to do such a thing. 

The next day he drove to Quantico, arriving earlier than was originally intended, but he was nothing if not punctual. He was quickly shuttled to Jack Crawford's office, a visitor's badge pinned to his jacket, and a general air of curiosity. 

"Ah, Dr. Lecter, please come in." Jack greeted, shifting some papers around on his desk and gesturing to a chair across from him. "Will should be here shortly. In the meantime, I can introduce you to the case. Would you like some coffee?" 

"Please." Hannibal turned to what was quite obviously a murder board, connecting disappearances of eight girls, all the same age, weight, height, hair color, eye color, and general skin tone across the state of Minnesota. As Jack explained, Hannibal stood moving toward the board to examine it and the details closer. 

He was intrigued with this killer, mostly because he seemed to be somewhere along the lines of Hannibal himself. Human, obviously, but much like Hannibal lived on the side of the consumer. There were really only two categories in the world, the consumer and the consumed. The world was the greatest consumer of them all. It would have everyone eventually, even Hannibal himself. Rivers and oceans wore at rocks and even those bodies of water were subject to wear themselves. Things came and went, consumed by the world around them. Predator and prey. On and on the cycle went. So far, Hannibal had been free of being consumed. He was the consumer. Alone, yes, but at the top of the food chain, consuming all under him. 

This killer wasn't at the top of the food chain but was certainly a consumer himself. 

The door opened off to his right and Hannibal saw a head of curly, dark hair enter the room. 

"Ah, Will." Jack greeted, purposefully keeping his voice cheerful. 

Hannibal glanced at his watch, noting it was far after the set appointment time. He was late. Purposefully, Hannibal could tell. 

The other man wore a flannel shirt that was covered in dog fur. Hannibal could tell every species of canine, seven dogs in total, from where he stood still by the board. His hair was artfully untamed, meant to cover his eyes which were already covered by a pair of glasses. A fake pair of glasses. 

"Will," Jack continued, either oblivious to his profiler's discomfort at having arrived at all or was willfully ignorant of it. "This is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Lecter, this is Will Graham." 

Mr. Graham nodded, immediately heading for a chair before ever giving Hannibal a chance to shake his hand. 

Jack cleared his throat and continued where he left off, offering Mr. Graham a cup of coffee as he had Hannibal. "Media coverage of this has only spiked in the last few days." 

Hannibal hummed to himself. This he knew, having researched more of the case prior to his arrival at Quantico. 

"Tell me, how many confessions?" He asked, mainly to the board but loud enough that Jack and Mr. Graham could hear him. 

"Twelve dozen last time I checked. None of them knew details. Until this morning. Then everyone knew the details. Some genius in Duluth PD took a picture of Elise Nichols’ body with their phone and shared it with a few close friends. Freddy Lounds ran it on Tattlecrime.com." Jack said. 

"Tasteless," Mr. Graham muttered, bitterly. 

"Do you often have problems with taste?" Hannibal asked, more professionally curious than anything. 

"My thoughts are not often tasty."

Hannibal leaned away from the board, intent on slowly making his way back to the chair he once occupied. "Nor mine. No effective barriers."

"I make forts." 

"Associations come quickly." 

"So do forts."

Hannibal had returned to his chair by this point and was already enjoying himself immensely with wit the other had displayed. 

"Not fond of eye contact, are you?" He asked before taking a sip of coffee. 

"Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough. And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking those whites are really white or they must have hepatitis, or is that a burst vein? So I try to avoid eyes whenever possible." The other, Will, said. 

And Hannibal couldn't stop himself from smiling. 

How beautiful.

_Will._

* * *

Will already hated Dr. Hannibal Lecter. 

They hadn't been in a room together for long, but he was already completely fed up with the man and partially with Jack Crawford. He couldn't stop himself from leaving the room in a huff of frustration, not even bothering to address either man with a decent farewell. 

"Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lecture on psychoanalyzing."

If he had any doubts about Jack's trust in his stability, they were quickly dashed on the rocks behind Hannibal Lecter's eyes. And there were rocks. Will could see them so clearly. It was why he avoided eye contact, to begin with. How easy it was to slip into the minds of others, just from their eyes alone. He barely had an anchor when it came to their words, but eyes were like whirlpools, always dragging him inward until he felt like he was drowning in the depths of other's minds. 

What was even more irritating, was that he was certain behind the amber eyes of Hannibal Lecter that he had glimpsed so briefly, he hadn't found fear or professional curiosity. He found amusement. And that was new. No one ever looked at him with amusement like that. Oh, certainly they had looked with amusement. But normally the amusement was at him. For being weird. Different. Terrifying. But that's not the amusement he glimpsed in Hannibal Lecter's eyes. 

He wondered who had directed Jack to Hannibal in the first place and couldn't help but think it might have been Alana Bloom. 

Alana, beautiful, kissable Alana, who saw Will as unstable from the moment they met. 

He mostly snapped his way through class. There was certainly something cathartic about talking at people rather than to them. His mind, though, kept circling back to Hannibal Lecter. 

There was something else there. he was certain. 

He shook off the thoughts of the psychiatrist, who was clearly meant to be _his_ psychiatrist. Why else would he have been there? Why else could Alana Bloom not have been there? 

Will shoved the thoughts into the back of his mind, focusing on returning home to his newest dog. Winston. 

Dogs were easy. People were hard. Or maybe it was that people were all too easy too. Easy for him to fall into, and it took too much to dig himself out. Murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths. They were always the easiest for Will to fall into. Maybe because there was a darkness within them that sang to the darkness within Will. The darkness he tried so hard to push down over and over again. He couldn't embrace that darkness. He wouldn't. 

But he could be close to it. 

Maybe that was what Alana Bloom really sensed, even if she didn't know it. The fact that Will wanted to be near that darkness. It was why he was a cop, and then tried for the FBI. And when that didn't work, he decided to teach at Quantico, sticking his nose in cases here and there as a consult whenever he could. It was the closest he could go when that pendulum dropped behind his eyes and suddenly he was in the shoes of someone else taking life after life. 

He wasn't at all surprised when a body dropped the next day. As much as he was that there was a _body._ Their killer never left a body. There was never any evidence of the missing girls, though all were presumed dead. Before Elise Nichols, there was never any evidence that they were dead. Except Elise had returned to her parents, liver stitched back into place after removal. The meat was tainted by cancer, and the consumption of the other girls was the only explanation for the lack of evidence. 

But this-

This wasn't the same type of consumption. 

This was different. And Will could see it with such stark contrast. 

"This isn't our killer. Our killer loves women." As he spoke, his mind began to fill in the blanks, the missing pieces. "He has a daughter. Same age as the other girls. Same hair color, same eye color, same height, same weight. She’s an only child. She’s leaving home. He can’t stand the thought of losing her. She’s his Golden Ticket."

"What about the Copy Cat?" Jack asked and Will could hear his uncertainty at even calling the killer a copycat at all. 

But it was. Will could see it. The antlers, the body. _The body._ This wasn't love, this wasn't sensitivity. This wasn't a man who was so terrified at losing his daughter that he killed others to consume them as a way of keeping her close. This was someone brutal, intelligent, and knowledgeable. 

Though the last part didn't narrow down anything. Thanks to Freddie Lounds, details about the case were everywhere. Anyone could have done it. 

"You should have Dr. Lecter draw up a profile," Will said as a final snap, walking away from the body left by another killer. "You seem to be very impressed with his opinion." 

Some part of him was incredibly pleased with his final jab at Jack. It was earned after Jack felt the need to assign him a babysitter. But most of him just felt nothing. The rest of him was far too focused on the now two killers in front of him. It was them who occupied his mind as he returned to the motel he was staying at. It was them who haunted Will's mind, running in opposing circles with how vastly different they were. 

He couldn't help but feel as though the body in the field, impaled on antlers, was a sacrifice to a god. Or worse, to him. 

But it felt like that. It felt like-

Will shook his head under the spray of water. He was so lost in thought that he barely registered that he had started to shower, washing off the day. Unfortunately, no matter how much he washed his body, he could never cleanse his mind. And it was his mind that continued to run wild. 

Even as he pulled on a t-shirt and briefs, tucking himself into the uncomfortable motel bed, he could still see the killers running around. One, who killed for love, and one who killed because he could. Because it gave him power. Because he had power, and he used it to take what he wanted. But the killer may never kill like this again. And that was all the more frustrating. 

Because the kill was beautiful. The body left in the field, impaled on antlers with arms spread as though it could fly. As though the very crows on it would wrap their talons around the antlers and the whole of them would fly off into the darkness. 

He only knew he was asleep when he saw the stag. 

It was beautiful, with a dark hide covered in ravens' feathers. Its dark eyes stared at Will, watching him from where it stood in the darkness, antlers reaching skyward, twisting and turning above its proud head. 

And then the dream changed. Will saw curving lips, opening slightly for a breath. He saw a flash of teeth, not threateningly displayed, but entirely dangerous. He felt, more than saw, fingers brush over his throat, over his hammering pulse and bobbing throat. And then he saw amber eyes, a strong jaw, and sharp cheekbones. 

Will woke to a knock on the door, one that jolted him out of the grasp of the hands in his sleep and into the waking world. He didn't know which was worse. 

He stumbled to the door, not even bothering to cover himself as he pulled it open. 

"Good morning, Will." Hannibal Lecter said from the other side. "May I come in?"

Will tried to focus on anything but him, deflecting sentence after sentence until he had no excuse to let the man in. The man who offered breakfast and set it neatly while Will pulled on a pair of jeans. The man who sat across from him, watching as he took a bite and then hummed at the surprisingly good taste.

The man who had amber eyes, a strong jaw, and sharp cheekbones. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://neurowriter14.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/NWriter14)


End file.
